“Tempted? A way out”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Thursday, August 10, 2023

2 Samuel 11:1-27 (Forward, p. 12) CEV p. 324

I can’t think of any episode in history quite so sad, or so disgraceful, as the one related in today’s passage. Yet, in terms of human behaviour, it does not seem at all far-fetched, much less unusual. Just to illustrate this, years ago I re-told this story to a confirmation class but put it in more modern garb. Here I will tell it again, but with today’s world and situation:

“A certain country’s armed forces were embroiled in a serious conflict in Afghanistan, and, for reasons known only to himself, the president of that nation decided to go against custom and the usual practice and not go out and command his forces in person. Instead, he stayed behind in the capital city. As it so happened, he caught glimpse of a very attractive young woman, was quite smitten with her, and asked his staff to find out who she was. Finding out that she was the wife of one of his military officers back in the field in Afghanistan, he asked that she be brought to him. (Whether she was consenting or not, is something of a moot point. When the president speaks, do you really have a lot of choice?). Anyway, the young woman was brought to the president, he slept with her and she conceived a child. (Wouldn’t you say that this is already a rather muddy and terrible situation? How can the president get out of this, for rather soon the pregnancy will become obvious? Could things get any worse? Actually, they do. Read on and see.)

“The president knows that he will be in ‘quite a pickle’ should this get out, so he devises a plan. He sends a message to the army commander in Afghanistan to give the woman’s husband leave to come home, hoping against hope that the man will be so thrilled with this chance to see his wife that he will sleep with her, and voila, he and everyone else will think that the child is his. Problem solved, yes?

“No, the woman’s husband was a stickler for protocol, a stickler for troop morale. He felt that it was totally unseemly, totally inappropriate, for him to ‘indulge himself’ in this way when his comrades were enduring terrible and unspeakable horrors out there in the field. So, rather than go home, he found a place to sleep along with the president’s guards. And yes, even

when he was got drunk by the president, he still did not succumb. So, now the president was even more in a pickle.

“However, he was not quite out of options. He had the commander assign this poor man the leadership of one of the more hazardous operations in all of the Afghan conflict. He was to lead a brigade in rooting out a pocket of the Taliban from some remote caves where they had hidden. And, what happened? You can only guess. A Taliban sniper, recognizing who was the man in charge, shot him and killed him outright.

“Problem solved, right? No one would know the better. The young woman, knowing nothing of the circumstances, mourned her loss. And after a discrete and proper time of mourning, the president took her to be his wife,

thinking then, that he was now free and clear. Who would have done the math, and who, apart from the commander, would have known anything about what really happened? And surely, he would not say anything.

But God knew and called the president to account for his deeds.”

Does this sound far-fetched? Not at all, for we have frequently heard of people ‘in high places’ who have become quite well known for their extra-marital escapades and sexual encounters—and yes, even though they were married, and though those they had ‘encounters’ with were also married. After all, as one person was known to boast, “yah, women are attracted to powerful and important men as myself.”

But, let us return to the Biblical story, the story behind my modern retelling. It is the story of King David’s affair with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his officers by the name of Uriah. And yes, David staged a cover-up quite similar to the one that I have re-told. And yes, God was fully aware of what David had done, and called David to task, as we see in 2 Samuel 12.

All of this is incredibly unsettling, for elsewhere David is described as a ‘man after God’s own heart’ (1 Samuel 13:14), which is usually interpreted as meaning that David loved and valued the same things that God does, or that David’s heart intent was always to do God’s will. Some scholars question whether this is really what this phrase means, but let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that this interpretation is correct.

Here then, it is even more telling, even more powerful, for cannot it be said that there are those over the years who have been very dedicated to God,

very passionate about doing His will, who nevertheless slipped and fell into grievous sin, though not necessarily in the same way that David did. So, for all of us, this comes as an important warning: no one is immune from error or from falling. As the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians, in referring to the example of the Hebrew people in an earlier time period: “Even if you think you can stand up to temptation, be careful not to fall. You are tempted in the same way that everyone else is tempted” (1 Corinthians 10:12-13a)

But now for the rest of the story: King David, unlike certain others known to us, was fully repentance for his terrible misdeeds and asked for God’s forgiveness (see Psalm 51). He was indeed forgiven by God, but that was not the end of the story for David. There were consequences to his actions which David never, ever got rid of. There was turmoil within his own family and household, rape and murder and insurrection, and even a terrible and disastrous civil war. This too, should be a lesson to us today.

The apostle Paul, in the passage quote above, tells us that temptation, the ‘’opportunities’ for straying, straying from God’s purposes for our lives, will always be there. But then, in the second part of verse 13, he adds, “But God can be trusted not to let you be tempted too much, and he will show you how to escape from your temptations.” What good news that is! It is sad that David did not take God up on this. I pray that we, all of us, will do so.

Forward notes: “S David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her” (verse 4a).

“It is a sordid story from beginning to end. A powerful man wants something and makes everyone bend to his will. There’s no good spin that can be put on this story: David, king of Judah and Israel, sees the beautiful Bathsheba, wants her, makes sure her husband (that inconvenient impediment to his will) is killed in battle, and takes Bathsheba for himself.

“Most of our sin is not so virulent or reckless, but it still distorts our lives. Augustine of Hippo was scarred for life by a prank he and his friends played, stealing pears from an orchard for no reason except that they wanted them. When I was in sixth grade, I accepted an invitation from a girl to a dance—only to break that date when a more attractive girl (so I

thought) asked me. Life went on for me and, presumably, both girls. But my soul has never forgotten. Nor should it.

“The remarkable thing is that God used even David for great things, despite his grievous sin. God si still doing that with you, and I hope, with me.”

Moving Forward: “How can you quash your selfish desires?”